Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess by Bettany Hughes

Description

An erudite, lively search for the real Helen of Troy from one of Britain’s most widely acclaimed historians.

For close to 3000 years Helen of Troy has  been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty & a reminder of the terrible power beauty can wield. Because of her double marriage to the Greek king Menelaus & the Trojan prince Paris, Helen was held responsible for enmity between East & West.

Helen exists in many guises: a matriarch from the Mycenaean world; Helen of Sparta; the home-wrecker of the Iliad; the whore of Greek tragedy; the pin-up of Romantic artists.

Focusing on the “real” Helen, a flesh-&-blood aristocrat from the Greek Bronze Age, Hughes reconstructs the life context of this prehistoric princess. Through the eyes of a young Mycenaean woman, she examines the physical, historical & cultural traces that Helen has left on locations in Greece, N. Africa & Asia Minor.

This book unpacks the facts & myths surrounding one of the most enigmatic & notorious figures of all time.